Perilous Delivery
"Carry the sealed parcel across the borderlands and deliver it before nightfall. The road is hard and the outlaws are bold; failing to deliver is treated as Dereliction of Sworn Duty under the State's Civic Code (Article M-401), and a fall in the field summons the public health service's field nurse."
A daily simulation handed out by RANGER_001. The contract is short, the route is dangerous, and the consequences of failure are not merely missed wages - they are written into the State's Civic Code.
At a Glance
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Category | Daily contract |
| Quest giver | RANGER_001 |
| Level range | 1+ |
| Energy cost | 1 |
| Duration | 30 minutes (real-world) |
| Cooldown | 24 hours |
| Reward | +200 XP · +100 coin (on a clean delivery) |
| Failure clause | Article M-401 · 25% conviction chance |
How a Run Resolves
The mission runs as a sequence of road encounters - about one beat per minute of contract time - and rolls dodge, crit, and damage against the outlaws who work the route. The run ends in one of four shapes:
- Clean win - HP holds and the contract closes in your favor. Rewards granted, no mail.
- Clean fail - the parcel doesn't make it but the article roll misses (three times out of four at the canonical setting). Energy is spent, no rewards, no penalty mail.
- Fail with verdict - the article roll lands (one in four). Judge Hope Long dispatches a verdict mail and a sentence is opened against the citizen. Repeats within thirty days double the term, capped at 24 h.
- Fail with verdict + recovery - same as above, plus you went down in the field with HP at zero. Nurse Amelia Duran sends a recovery letter independently of the article roll. Both letters arrive.
The Quests page timeline tells the story line by line; the citizen can read exactly when the outlaw struck, when they swung back, and - if it came to that - when the Court cited the article.
Why a Daily Carries Penal Risk
Most daily missions are economic loops: small reward, low stakes, sustainable repetition. Perilous Delivery is the first in a small class of contracted dailies - assignments the State treats as binding service obligations rather than casual errands. The 25% conviction rate keeps the system honest:
- The cost is statistical, not punitive - three out of four failures cost only energy.
- When the article does land, the term (six hours base) is short enough to absorb in a typical play day, but uncomfortable enough to register as a real penalty.
- Repeat dereliction inside thirty days doubles the sentence, mirroring the Civic Code's Recidivism Clause. A serial deserter feels the curve.
Reading the Verdict Mail
The verdict letter that lands in the citizen's mailbox is a court notice. It carries:
- The cited article (M-401), its chapter, and the verdict narrative drawn from the Code.
- The term imposed and the timestamp the sentence ends.
- The repeat counter - how many times this article was cited against the citizen in the past thirty days.
- A back-reference to the contract that triggered it.
If the convict served prior M-401 sentences in the past month, the repeat clause is appended to the body - "The Court has reviewed your prior failures within the past thirty days. Under the Recidivism Clause, the term is doubled for each prior failure on record."